YBA & Beyond: British Art in the 90s from the Tate Collection | The National Art Center, Tokyo (NACT)

Emerging in the wake of the Margaret Thatcher era, the Young British Artists (YBAs) and their contemporaries embraced shock, irreverence and entrepreneurial flair. While the YBA label (applied after the landmark 1988 ‘Freeze’ exhibition organised by Damien Hirst) was often contested, it came to define a generation that reimagined what art could be. Painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation all became tools for probing themes of identity, consumer culture and shifting social structures. 

The National Art Center’s ‘YBA & Beyond: British Art in the 90s from the Tate Collection’ is the first exhibition in Japan devoted exclusively to British art of the 1990s. Featuring around 100 works by some 60 artists, the show captures a turbulent and transformative period in British culture, when politics, society and art collided to spark a wave of radical experimentation.

Highlights include works by Hirst, Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen, Lubaina Himid, Wolfgang Tillmans and Julian Opie, alongside others who reshaped contemporary art on a global stage. More than a retrospective, ‘YBA & Beyond’ offers a vivid portrait of 1990s Britain, an era when art intersected with music, fashion and subculture, leaving a legacy that continues to resonate today.